He wants to demonstrate an enormously important thing
tonight, unknown by most believers, and it's the
key to the kingdom.
And there's no way to speak of it
through preparation, because if you come prepared to
speak of it, you're contradicting the very thing
that God is about.
It's a little four-letter word, L-I
-S-E, life.
The alternative to life is religion.
And you would be amazed at the number
of Christians who are living Judaic lives.
And Judaism would be tremendous or inspiring and
compelling and impressive if it were not for
the fact that God has given a better
alternative, a greater covenant, a new covenant, based
on his life.
But the tragedy is, for God to have
given it that great price, and for people
to call themselves by the name of that
covenant, and yet to be living in the
other.
How many people are mystified already?
You're not?
Well, if that's the way you're going to
do it, you're going to take off my
jacket.
I'm going to continue.
Let's pray together, okay?
Precious holy God, Lord, we ask that tonight
you would set forth in such a glorious
way what is your great gift to men,
and what it is to which we are
called, and how it is that we might
appropriate it, Lord, move in it, and demonstrate
it, and set it forth.
Thank you, Lord, that it pleases you to
express this through a piece of clay and
dust.
And if there's anybody in this room who
thinks, Lord, that that introduction, that talk about
not being prepared, was a device, set them
straight.
And through the awkwardness, Lord God, of putting
this together, show yourself forth.
Mighty God, smite our hearts with the glory
of the new covenant way, and forever ruin
us for anything less.
And we'll thank you and praise you, precious
God, that you have offered to us the
great tree of life.
Speak from it tonight.
Demonstrate it tonight.
Be it tonight.
And in these days, and we'll thank you
and praise you for this now, in Yeshua's
holy name.
Well, I think I want to start from
the end, and then go back to the
beginning.
Chapter 22 of the book of Revelation.
Chapter 22, first verse, book of Revelation.
I'm reading from the Amplified Edition.
Then he showed me the river whose waters
give life, sparkling like crystal, flowing out from
the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Through the middle of the broad way of
the city, also on either side of the
river, the tree of life, with its twelve
varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh
crop, and the leaves of the tree were
for the healing and the restoration of the
nations.
Fourteenth verse, blessed, happy, and to be envied
are those who cleanse their garments that they
may have the authority and right through the
tree of life to enter in through the
gates to the city.
Now to the book of Genesis and the
first mention of that same tree.
The last verse of the third chapter of
the book of Genesis.
So God drove out the man and he
placed at the east of the garden of
Eden the cherubim and the flaming sword which
turned every way to keep and guard the
way of the tree of life.
Is that what it says in the King
James?
Does it say the way of the tree
of life?
Praise the Lord.
We're called to a way.
There were two trees in the garden then
and there are two trees now.
And these two trees have ever and always
been pitted, one against the other.
One is calmly, attractive, beguiling.
Remember what the woman said?
She saw that the tree was good and
pleasant for food, that it was delightful to
look at and a tree to be desired
to make one wise.
The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil is always powerfully seductive and attractive.
How would you like to live without knowing?
Excuse me, just for the first minute right
there.
But think back in recent hours, days and
weeks, how much the word knowledge or knowing
has punctuated your speech and your prayers.
If you would only know what God was
about, if you only knew what his will
was, if you only understood what he wanted
you to do, if you could only understand
the circumstances, then you would be quick to
obey it.
Well, of course, there's nothing to that.
I remember I came to an informal Bible
study one night and the guy gave a
terrific talk on obeying the will of God,
that when God shows you his will, that
we ought to be quick to do it.
And something was percolating in my spirit as
he spoke and I said, Lord, I'm just
a guest, I'll keep my mouth shut, except
that someone actually bid me to speak.
And sure enough, at the end, I was
bidden to speak.
And I said in my fresh, saucy Jewish
way, I appreciated the talk tonight and of
course it's good to obey the will of
God when he shows it.
But I want to say that at the
end of the age, the paralyzing predicament and
the demanding thing for the children of God
will be to obey without knowing.
I've got a precious little booklet here by
Watchman Lee and it's called Two Principles of
Conduct.
Have you ever noticed the duality of things?
Am I getting fancy on you?
That there are always two alternatives?
I'm fond of saying that you can know
when you're converted that when you were an
atheist, it was always so much more than
two alternatives.
It was always such a complexity of choices,
such variable factors, such nuances and shades of
gray that broke your brains to pieces.
You ever been an atheistic schoolteacher as I
have been?
And have been sincere and have tried to
compute grades?
It'll kill you.
And make you realize in one fell swoop
that you're a man and not a God.
And to know that if you come up
with a C plus rather than a B
minus, it can permanently injure the career of
the student whose grade you're computing.
And which of us is wise enough to
compute all the variables and to tell the
difference between C plus and B minus?
That was one of the contributing factors that
brought a terminus to my atheism and opened
me to hear the still small voice of
God.
Now once converted, you know what I found
out?
There aren't so many variable factors.
It's usually black or white, life or death,
the kingdom of God or the kingdom of
this present world, spirit or flesh.
It's always a choice between dualities.
It's always one tree or another.
It's always, in the last analysis, pleasing man
or pleasing God.
You ever notice that when the smoke clears?
It's a choice of one of two things.
Now I just left a Jewish man in
Beverly Hills hanging on the ropes just an
iota away from a knockout.
The Lord has really been giving him a
zest in these days.
Right to the tissue.
Pow, pow, pow.
Beautiful man as the world goes.
Five Academy Award Oscars on the mantle.
Prestigious, well-known.
First time we met, he took me to
Beverly Hills Country Club for lunch.
And he paid full for that lunch and
sustains our community for a month.
And as I looked at this man before
whom men were scraping and bowing, I saw
a kid in short pants living a child's
fantasy, a foolish dream.
But the pity is that the whole world
has joined in that conspiracy with him and
they all think it's real.
Well, we've got to give him a second
chance.
These recent days have just come up from
this.
I can't even sum up.
But God has just been progressively taking the
ground down from under his feet.
And he has only a wisp of ground,
but he's ready to sag at any moment.
We had an early breakfast this morning in
which he made a last brave resolution in
which he complimented me and wished that he
could be as I was, but.
And he expressed his last intellectual reservations.
And I just looked at him wistfully and
sadly and went up to my room to
complete my packing and thought that was the
end.
But no, he came in difficult because I
had made one last crack.
He's working on a great musical piece.
And I said, I think you're afraid that
if you come to the Lord that he's
not going to let you finish it.
And you want to make one last heroic
statement of resounding audacity.
And he came back to see me as
I was finishing the packing.
And that's when he walked down.
He said, I cried out to God, is
that true?
And he said, I think God would say
yes, it's true.
So he said, I said, well, what's holding
me back?
What's the obstacle?
And he said, I believe that I've been
an egoist all my life.
My whole life, together with other artists of
this community, has been founded on ego.
But he said, I think that my real
obstacle is that I don't understand the Trinity.
And my heart went clunk.
And that little buzzer was going off in
my spirit saying, cop out, cop out, cop
out.
And I said, no, brother, that's not your
problem.
You already touched it in passing.
All your life has been motivated, been based
upon, animated by, driven by ego.
And ego can take a man at a
distance if he has natural endowments and gifts.
And God is saying to you, pull out
that plug and plug into me and have
another source of life.
And you're paralyzed for fear of what that
new life will be and if you shall
be sustained by it.
And what about the perilous moment when you
unplug one and you've not yet plugged into
the other?
He reminded me of another encounter I had
with a Jewish man.
There's something about these encounters with Jewish men.
It's not because it's an ethnic oddity.
It's because Jews are so deeply established in
the spirit of the world.
They have shaped it.
So when God puts his finger in the
chest of one of these men, he's touching
the wellsprings of a whole world established on
another principle.
And I remember this other encounter with this
Jewish man who had come to the Lord
and we were sitting at his kitchen table.
He had a stable of his own horses,
several kinds of businesses and homes and properties
and wealth.
And he was kicking it off one end
to the other.
Like me, he had his origins in Brooklyn.
He knew what the depression years were.
He had struggled and lifted himself up by
his own bootstraps, by his own heroic exertion.
And now he had made it.
He was saying, I'm ready to give God
my horses.
I'll give God my racing stable.
I'll give God my businesses, my house.
And he went right on down the list.
And all of a sudden I heard myself
saying, would you give God also your compulsive,
I forgot how I expressed it, drive to
succeed.
Would you give him that competitive spirit?
And guess what happened?
He freaked out and could not do it.
He was ready to give the things which
his competitive spirit had obtained, but he wasn't
ready to yield the spirit by which they
were obtained.
Because I know him.
He could give his horses and his stables
and his businesses, but given that spirit, given
that drive, given that competitive urgency, it will
only be a matter of time before he'll
be ready.
In a word, children, he was unwilling to
give up the root of his life.
He had been so long eating from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
so long making decisions by his own moral
and ethical and business mind, that he was
paralyzed to consider that there's another alternative, which
is utterly frightening.
And that is the very life of God
himself.
Well, how would you like to have your
life founded on that other principle?
It's great when that life moves.
It's great when it stirs.
It's great when that spirit broods.
It's great when he gives utter incentives.
But what about the times when he chooses
to be silent and leaves you with an
embarrassed and hotly flushed face?
What does it say in Colossians?
Let me find it.
If you then be risen with Christ, seek
those things which are above where Christ is
on the right hand of God.
Set your affection on things above, not on
things on the earth.
And here it comes.
For you are dead and your life is
hid with Christ in God.
You've pulled out the plug.
There's no more juice from the world.
There's nothing that's going to animate you or
make you clever or give you things to
speak or to do.
You're dead.
You're a lump.
Dead is dead.
And your life is hid with Christ in
God.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear,
then and only then shall you also appear
with him in God.
Now, how would you like to be this
man with the five Academy Awards at the
next Hollywood cocktail party where you have been
a raconteur, that means a bright storyteller and
a whip and an intellectual and a man
conversant with the arts and one who makes
easy conversations and can drop names in every
moment and is looked upon as a scintillating
figure.
And you come to this cocktail party as
yet another man, one brought back from the
dead.
And you stand there and wait for the
life of Christ to make himself manifest.
And if he chooses not to express it,
you're going to appear to be the most
unseemly and unattractive lump.
I see our champs back there, and he's
ready.
With all due respect, Baloney, he's never ready.
And last night, well, maybe I shouldn't mention
the when.
You'll find out where it was.
I spoke at a meeting, and God only
gave me a beginning.
And I was faithful to speak that much
to give a mouthful of what I was
saying.
And it proved to be displeasing and irritating
to the pastor and leaders of the place,
so much so that they called me into
their office afterwards to exhort me and to
rebuke me for injuring the flock and speaking
things that ought not to be spoken to
young believers.
And my only frail defense in this barrage
of four men coming on strong with great
years of experience was that I believed God
and believed that I had given him a
mouth for his own speaking, however foolish.
I wondered if you understand what God is
talking about tonight.
And I can't think of a more appropriate
beginning for a series of talks in the
days that celebrate the resurrection of Christ than
when it has pleased God to begin this
night.
The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil will always appear attractive to the eyes.
It will always commend itself to men, will
always itch to pluck and to eat and
to live from it.
See, it's not evil.
It's the knowledge of good and evil.
It's knowing, it's having that security before we
make our act.
But the tree of life has another mode
altogether.
Watch when he says, what is Christianity?
Christianity is a matter of life.
If you are a Christian, then you possess
a new life.
And when you have to decide on the
course of action, you do not ask, would
it be right to do this?
You ask, if I do this, how will
it affect my inner life?
How will that new life within me react
to this?
It's the most amazing thing that the objective
of so many Christians is only conformity to
an external standard.
Though what God has given us by new
birth is not a lot of new rules
and regulations to which we are required to
conform.
Christianity does not require that we investigate the
rights and wrongs of alternative courses of action,
but that we test the reaction of the
divine life to any proposed course.
This is heavy stuff, folks.
It is so heavy, so curious, so perfect,
so utterly profound, that I don't dare paraphrase
it.
I want you to hear directly from the
pen of the most inspired spokesman of the
deepest principles of the...
How many of us are making moral and
ethical decisions?
It's like to do this, it's not like
to do that.
How would it look?
I'm a Christian.
How would it appear?
That's nudism, folks.
As Christian, you now possess the life of
Christ, and it is the reaction of his
life that you have to consider.
Do you realize that the conduct of many
a non-Christian is governed by the principle
of right and wrong?
Where does the Christian differ from the non
-Christian if the same principle governs both?
God's word shows us plainly that the Christian
is controlled by the life of Christ, not
by an external code of ethics.
Boy, I'll tell you, we're going to miss
God if we think we're going to move
by an external code.
And my life in the Lord is yet
very young, and I can yet cite adventures
in God so unusual and so unconventional that
at first hearing you would strongly contend and
dispute whether God was the author of those
actions and those speakings.
You would say, God would never do such
a thing.
And yet, in obedience to such acts and
speakings, I've seen the life of God go
forth.
Oh, I can multiply the instances.
What would you say to a Jewish kid
at a fraternity house at a great university
in the midst of a frenzied six-hour
marathon, an encounter between a foolish spokesman for
Christ and an outraged assemblage of Jewish young
intellectuals who have invited me to debate their
atheistic professor of comparative religion.
People hanging from the chandeliers, waiting to watch
with glee the comeuppance of this nuisance who
had already shaken the campus and was embarrassing
them as a Jew.
People who so hated what I was speaking
and found it so offensive that they couldn't
stand it and got up out of their
seats and left the room in disgust and
bitterness and were back two minutes later because
they couldn't stay away either.
What did Jesus say?
Those who love the truth will hear my
voice.
Oh, it will drive us to a fury.
But what are you going to do with
the Jewish?
About ten o'clock at night, this had
gone on now for four hours, one of
these students got out of his seat and
began to approach me with his fists clenched
and his knuckles wiped and spittle at the
corners of his mouth and his eyes ablaze
and he was trembling like a leaf.
And he stood nose to nose with me.
Can you picture this?
Everybody stopped breathing, including me.
If your God can do what you say
that he can, I defy him to save
me now.
And I was looking around for my four
spiritual laws.
I'll tell you, children, in such a moment
as that, when two thousand years of bitterness
and frenzy and satanic distortion, no amount of
clever speaking or four spiritual laws or forty
will answer to the moment.
You know what we need in that moment?
Something of that truth.
And I opened my mouth, if you want
to see something pathetic, stupefied, dumbfounded, terrified, sensing
that the whole night had come to a
climax in this one moment and I'm not
clever enough to meet it.
And out of that nothingness and emptiness and
barrenness and futility, when life and death were
hanging in the back, God took a great
Turkish towel and dipped it in icy water,
dipped it, he saturated it, and brought it
up sopping wet and twisted it and made
of it a bludgeon.
And as I opened my mouth, he gave
that tear such a zest in the pus.
With my statement, you need not think that
you can receive your spirit's sting.
Is that what they taught you, Pastor?
Jewish amen?
That's the point, children.
Nothing that we have been taught, no principle,
no knowledge, is going to suffice in moments
of his life, his tree, his pure waters
of life, giving its fruit.
But I'll tell you, it's a lot safer
and less demanding.
And your own stockpile of religious clichés.
Pastor, are you deprecating the word of God?
No.
But I'm saying, accept that a word has
been quickened by the waters of life in
that moment.
I want to ask you a question tonight,
children.
You don't mind me calling you children, do
you?
I better explain it because it's not because
I'm a hot shot or I'm looking down
from some lofty Olympian height.
But I believe that it is an expression
of the very thing that I'm saying.
I believe in my simplicity and naivety that
the one who is speaking to you tonight
is the resurrected Christ.
How do you like them apples, as my
wife says?
I believe that.
But you say, Art, it sounds suspiciously like
you.
Are you trying to say that Jesus had
a book with action?
We're laughing, but you know that right there
is the glory of what all this is
about.
Or you say, if everybody sounded like Art
can, and with all due respect, if everybody
sounded like that particular historical Jesus who walked
and spoke.
God has done something far more magnificent, although
that was an unspeakable glory.
And I think he can't do it better
than I have done.
Greater in magnitude, greater in scope, greater in
variety.
Because he was limited in one body to
be in one time and place.
But look at the variety of what is
before us tonight.
It's remarkable.
And there's a world that's dying to hear
the originality of God, to see the uniqueness
of a living God and a resurrected Christ
expressed through your mouth and face.
There's only one word for that.
It's unspeakable glory.
And I can't think of anything more pitiable
than we should be an army of latinicans,
little religious kin saints, all stamped off the
same assembly line, all making the same pathetic
sounds, expressing the same inept clichés.
His fruit children is new in every season
to those who live from the tree of
life.
And I want to tell you tonight that
when God cast out that first man and
his wife and established seraphim with flaming swords
turning in every direction to God, the way
of the tree of life, lest they take
of it and eat and live forever.
Because the life that is eternal is also
the life that is abundant.
It's only one life.
But if you have received the Holy One
of Israel and the blood of forgiveness and
the Ruach HaKodesh, you are invited again to
the garden to eat from the tree of
life.
And as a man eats, so once you
realize, Wachmany says, that the determining factor in
all Christian conduct is life, then you know
that you must not only avoid all that
is evil, but also all that is just
externally good.
It wasn't just the tree of the knowledge
of evil.
It was the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil.
Because I want to tell you tonight that
there's something better than good.
It's that which is perfect and the greatest
problem for us.
And it was reiterated by an oracle which
God sent to us in Kansas City only
some months ago.
And he said to us, the greatest problem
for the saints of God in Kansas City,
and he might have said it before, the
saints of God everywhere, is that they will
substitute that which is good for that which
is perfect.
Only what issues from the Christian life is
Christian conduct.
I would say only what issues from Christ's
life is Christ's conduct.
Therefore we cannot consent to any action that
does not spring from life.
Nish speaks about an episode when he felt
that he ought to rebuke a brother and
he had a scriptural mandate to do it.
Isn't this what we do, playing the games
of discipleship and submission and all of the
other fads that are so new and popular
in Christendom?
We're the first in our neighborhood to have
one and we've got a new toy and
we're going to play with it, thank you.
And look how well we do it, better
than the next guy.
And we've learned how to conduct meetings and
take offerings and do all of the kinds
of religious things.
So he went to this man's house, all
set to do the good thing, and he
raised his hand to knock on the door
and that was as far as he ever
got.
His hand just dropped limply.
It was absolutely lifeless and inert.
God's life was simply not in that moment.
It's going to take something for us to
learn to live from the triumph.
It's going to be a whole new ballgame
and for many of us it's going to
be as terrifying and as fearful a prospect
in its unfamiliarity as is the invitation to
this Jewish Academy Award winner to pull out
the plug from the world and to plug
into God.
I think I just want to end tonight
with a few words out of Ezekiel 47.
Because in Revelation we read that this tree
of life is planted by a river.
It's a life-giving, fruit-bearing tree, but
it's got to be watered by a river
of life.
And in the 47th chapter, there is a
precious description.
I'll probably only use the first few.
In the 47th chapter of Ezekiel, afterwards he
brought me again unto the door of the
house, and, behold, waters issued out from under
the threshold of the house eastward.
For the forefront of the house stood toward
the east, and the waters came down from
under, from the right side of the house,
at the south side of the altar.
What do you think of such a verse?
Isn't it strange how particular God is?
South, under, right side?
Why does he bother with such picayune?
Because he's speaking of something very real, very
tangible.
It's not at all a metaphor.
It's not at all some kind of spiritual
abstraction.
The river of life issues forth from a
specific place.
And the word that I want to underline
in the conclusion of this talk tonight is
this.
It comes out from under.
And I'm not quite sure that I understand
what that means.
But it's got somehow to do with things
that issue forth out of burial, with things
that have been submitted unto death, with things
that pertain to humility rather than to arrogance
and to pride.
The pure waters of life issue out from
under the threshold of the door of the
temple.
I'll give you one last little anecdote from
my recent experience.
Some of you may have heard this if
you've heard a tape of mine.
But I was invited to a great charismatic
center not too long ago.
And they had just built themselves a new
building.
It cost $200,000.
They were an earnest people.
They were at a crossroad in their spiritual
history.
And their elders had heard me in Jerusalem
and felt that somehow I should be invited
to address them at this particular time.
That somehow they were going to hear from
an oracle of God.
And I agreed with them.
I felt it was God's invitation and I
came.
See, I'm naive enough to believe that every
speaking before God's people is a matter of
life and death.
Do you feel that?
Or do you think that it's an entertainment
and it has to do with some guy
who is well stocked with messages and can
turn it on and off at will?
I'll tell you it would have been a
lot easier tonight to come prepared and to
give you a standard message that would have
sent you with your tongue clucking and admiring
what a great guy I am.
But obedience to God unto death is the
willingness to come unprepared with the risk that
your fragile reputation is going to be destroyed
and people will cluck their tongue but not
with admiration.
But maybe with contempt.
Are you willing to suffer that?
That's what it means about coming from under
the door of the temple.
Well, I came to that community and they
had put me in a hotel room and
I went down on my face on that
floor and prayed to God.
And I reminded the Lord how earnest this
engagement was.
How significant was this fellowship and this crossroad
in their life.
And that I indeed wanted to be a
mouthpiece for the Lord in those days.
And I realized before long that God simply
was not going to give me an answer
right there and tell me what I was
supposed to speak.
So I finally got up off my knees
and got busy and got dressed to go
to the meeting and I figured well, in
the car on the way down there as
the Lord has so often done in times
past something is just going to well up
in my heart and spirit the theme, the
scripture, the text and I'll know.
We always have to know.
Well, if you've been Jewish for 35 years
it gets to be a habit.
And as I drove prayerfully to that meeting
God wasn't letting me know anything.
Well, I thought to myself, I still have
time.
I went into the prayer room in that
new building and I really went down before
God in earnest.
And I told Him in no uncertain terms
that the hour has now come and is
and He ought to be getting with it.
They were out there and they were expecting
and I was completely empty Lord.
It's remarkable how much self-love can hide
behind brave references to the needs of other
people.
Well, finally I came out there with trembling
and the meeting was underway and I took
a seat in the front pew and I
thought surely in the moments that remain before
I'm called up the Lord is going to
flash it on my heart.
And nothing was happening and the sweat was
beginning to trickle and I had my Bible
between my hands like this hoping that by
osmosis and when that didn't happen in the
last moment was to call it introduced in
any moment I turned to the table of
contents and I began reading through the books
of the Bible right
in prayer, right before the people, right at
the pulpit.
Boy, how He keeps you suspended.
And when I got up and I looked
down on those faces I had never seen
such an army of tape recorders in my
life.
And when I lifted my head, I knew
talk about zero talk about empty and you
know what happened in that moment?
My head was flattered with a hundred juicy
messages I
had a real itch that would have satisfied
everybody in the house.
Oh, dear children, do you understand what Elijah
meant when he said as my Lord liveth?
Do you understand that the Levites were not
consecrated for their priesthood until the day when
Moses said and go in and out of
the camp I
thought of a thousand things that would be
good and man-pleasing messages that God Himself
had given me but I could not speak
and finally I had the patience to speak
but I had nothing to say.
In that moment, as I looked on their
disappointed faces it gives me an angry mob
of rabbis any day but saves me from
the disappointed faces of God's people.
You know what their faces said?
What do you mean, Tess?
Ain't you prayed up?
Don't you not have faith?
Don't you take these things seriously?
What do you mean you have nothing to
say?
And I could not answer them a word.
You know the song we love to sing
about waiting on the Lord in
front of several hundred people who are looking
at you with beauty and the moments are
ticking away like veritable eternity and
just when it's coming to the last excruciating
moment and it becomes unbearable some man gets
up out of his seat with whom I
learned that he had never before ever publicly
opened his mouth.
But you know what I had to say
to this brother?
I'm sorry.
And then came the terrible silence again.
And in the last excruciating moment I woke
up I thought the scripture could just be
it and she gave the scripture, mamma mia
you had to be a fool not to
be able to spin off a half dozen
sermons on the spot with a scripture that
powerful.
And I had to say sorry.
Now what would you say folks if I
said that God had inspired both those people
to suggest those scriptures but that we were
not to act on either of them?
How would you like to go to that
school of obedience?
And finally in the ashes of terrible suffering
and death?
See death wouldn't be so bad if you
were just obliterated.
But it's remaining there that hurts.
Somewhere something broke forth in tongues and God
gave a word and a direction and we
were off and approved to be a knight
out of the ashes.
You're willing to be dead and hid with
Christ and God until His life is revealed
then your life shall be revealed with Him
unto glory and not before.
Children we have all sinned and or fallen
short of the glory of God.
The world is dying from boredom dying from
monotony it doesn't know what to do with
itself it's freaking out it's TV programs and
it's films are becoming grotesque and obscene it's
literature, it's entertainment odiastic and filthy we're on
a straight line collision course with Sodom and
Gomorrah because there is an inexorable pressure in
the world to produce some novelty to assuage
the boredom of men because they do not
know a God who is new and that
which God intended to be a life-giving
alternative to death has itself become a weary,
grey, dismal, religious thing punctuated only by a
little charismatic thrill we need something more than
new choruses and even freedom in the saying
of Amen we need a resurgence of the
life out of the personalities and mouths of
His children who are the instruments of His
speaking and the showing forth of His glory
new in every season because they eat from
the tree of life and are watered from
the purest waters of life the river that
flows forth from under the door of the
temple will you bow your heads with me?
Precious God, we repent we've never thought to
think of the word repent in such a
context as this we thought that we should
only repent if we had been guilty of
moral misdeeds but we never thought that we
ought to repent from having fed ourselves from
the wrong tree teach us what this means,
Lord show us that we have a choice
again and again and again to return to
the tree of life Mighty God, plant us
by the waters of life, Lord deeply water
us and bring forth from us in the
places where you have called us to live
our lives and to serve you bring forth
the originality and the uniqueness the life-giving
power, the creativity of a living God Gracious
God, gracious God help us to be truly
a new covenant people who can say with
Paul for me to live is Christ help
us, Lord, and keep us from anything less
however good than that which is perfect and
issues from you moment by moment thank you
for this speaking tonight, Lord that you fashion
it as we have gone bless it to
every hearer and seal it may it be
like a fire pent up in our bones,
Lord let it do a work in us
and turn us again to the source of
life Thank you, Lord Precious God, we love
you Hallelujah